Colombia’s health sector will join farmers, coffee growers and miners in a national strike, health worker unions announced Friday.
Demonstrations are scheduled as a protest against recent health sector reforms passed by Congress.
“We have exhausted the tracks of dialogue and therefore define the realization of a strike from August 19 to press the government to try and hear both our demands and aspirations,” Hector Gaviria Alviz, President of the national trade union of workers and public health (ANTHOC) told Colombia Reports.
According to the unionist, the health workers “wish to remove the economic concept of health and ensure that the service be provided directly by public hospitals and municipal authorities.”
Alviz additionally claimed that current health workers at present have no economic stability “as they are hired to work for two, three or maybe four months only.”
According to the unionist, recent legislation passed by congress “increases instability among health workers,” added Alviz.
The health sector strike follows peasant demonstrations in Catatumbo, nationwide miners strikes and proposed coffee farmer strikes set for August 17.
Sources
- Interview with Hector Gaviria Alviz